Director: Stephan Elliott

Cast: Laura Brent, Xavier Samuel, Kris Marshall,

Synopsis: A groom and his three best men travel to the Australian outback for a wedding.

Young traveller David (Xavier Samuel) meets in Mia (Laura Brent) the girl of his dreams and, after 10 idyllic days in Tuvalu, decides she is the woman he wants to spend the rest of his life with. Returning home to rainy old London, this news is met with little enthusiasm by his three mates, Tom (Graham Marshall), Graham (Kevin Bishop) and Luke (Tim Draxl) who see his decision to up stakes and start a new life with the woman of his dream as something of a betrayal. Nevertheless, they all agree to travel to Australia with him for the wedding.

Arriving the day before the ceremony, all four friends are staying at the palatial home of Mia’s parents, Barbara (Olivia Newton-John) and Jim (Jonathan Biggins). Jim is a State senator, an ambitious Alpha Male type who, nevertheless, is planning an early retirement and intends to hand the senator-ship over to Mia. The couple also have a second daughter, the overweight lesbian Daphne (Rebel Wilson). Immediately intimidated by his future father-in-law’s in-your-face aggression, David’s anxiety is only worsened by the antics of his immature friends. Making their own way to the house at which the wedding is to be held, the three friends stop off at a local drug dealer’s shack to score some weed and inadvertently take a bag containing a load of cocaine. Then, the evening before the wedding, they take David out for a ‘couple’ of drinks and end up kidnapping Jim’s campaign mascot, a ram, dress it in bra and panties, smear lipstick on its mouth and lock it with the drunken David in his room.

A Few Best Men is one of those movies that tries so hard to be funny that it trips itself up in the attempt. Scenes come and go at a lightning pace, as if director Stephan Elliott believes he can distract us from the absence of laughs simply by repeatedly throwing things at us until something works. But nothing much does. There are a few amusing moments and one decent performance, but other than that A Few Best Men is something of an embarrassment. Kris Marshall, as the anonymous lead’s laddish best friend manages to enliven most of the scenes in which he appears, and Kevin Bishop at least tries to do something with his thankless ‘scapegoat’ role, but everyone else simply appears to be going through the motions.